


there's nothing out there (but it's alright)

by uptownskunk



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Agender Character, Agender Stiles Stilinski, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canonical Character Death, Exorsexism, Gen, Light Angst, Misgendering, Pre-Canon, Questioning, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 13:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16476230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uptownskunk/pseuds/uptownskunk
Summary: Stiles wasn't born a boy.It takes him a long time to figure out exactly what that means.





	there's nothing out there (but it's alright)

**Author's Note:**

> So I was going through a USB drive of old fics I had written --- cringing at some of it, yeah, but not as much as I thought I would -- and I found this buried in there, written back in 2013. It's been a hot minute since I was actually into Teen Wolf (I stopped watching after Season 2) but when I was, I heavily related to Stiles as a character and was also in the process of figuring out I was agender myself and this story just came out one night. At that point, it was the first fic I wrote in years and the last one I wrote until I started writing again this year. 
> 
> Reading back over it, I thought it was decent enough to post. Maybe not the best thing I've ever written but highly personal, and maybe someone who is questioning themselves might get some use out of it, too. Who knows?
> 
> Also just want to know that Stiles uses he/him pronouns in this because I did, too, at that point in my life. Gender-Neutral pronouns in fic are great, I've written them myself in other stories, but people of any gender (or non-gender) can use he/him or she/her pronouns, too, and that's also important to represent.

Stiles wasn't born a boy.

At least, he doesn't think he was. It's a little hard to say what with the fact that he was an infant at the time and babies aren't usually known for remembering their babyhood, but what Stiles does know is that he isn't a boy _now_ and he didn't really have any attachments to being one _before_ and the idea that a doctor could take a peak at him and tell him what he was just made his stomach twist like it did that one time he had the flu and...

Yeah.

Not a boy. He's got that covered.

It just takes him a long time to figure out exactly what that means.

*****

Genim is four and has small legs and chubby cheeks and every time his dad calls him 'son' or his mom calls him her 'sweet little boy', he frowns a little and wonders why he doesn't understand what those things mean. Then he's distracted by his mom handing him his yellow crayon and he forgets all about it.

Until the next time, at least.

*****

Genim is barely into his first day of pre-school when he gets bullied for the first time. Jackson Whittemore makes fun of him because his mom walked him to the classroom and gave him a kiss on the forehead for good luck and apparently that makes him a “dork” and a “momma's boy” just as much as his name made him “a girl”.

It's the boy part makes him feel weird and uncomfortable and confused and this time, it's the girl part, too. There's no yellow crayon there to distract him from prodding at the feeling this time, but there is a Scott McCall complete with floppy hair, big eyes, and a kick to Jackson's shin as he tells the other boy not to be so mean.

They become close and later Scott will say that he's always wanted a brother and Genim's stomach will twist and he will say out loud that he doesn't really feel like a boy and Scott will scrunch his face up for a moment before smiling and saying that they can be partners instead, like in all the buddy-cop movies that they watch when their parents aren't looking.

Genim felt happy, then, but if you asked him now he'd say that it felt a little more like relief.

*****

Genim is about to start kindergarten when he realizes that he doesn't want to be Genim anymore.

Genim is a good _boy_ , Genim is _son_ , Genim is like a _brother_.

He doesn't like being those things, he doesn't like being Genim.

He tells Scott about it and Scott decides that he won't be Scott any more, either, so that they can do this together.

They come up with Stiles for him and Zordon for Scott and while Scott goes back to being Scott after a few weeks, Stiles sticks and his parents eventually learn to call him that without stumbling too much over a 'G' that's not there any more. his mom meets with his kindergarten teacher before class starts and tells her what to call him.

When his name—when _Stiles_ —is called on roll call, he raises his hand that day and for every day after it and when Jackson looks like he's going to say something about it, Scott swings a foot in his direction and he shuts his mouth.

Eventually, everyone forgets about Genim. It's a good day for Stiles.

*****

Stiles is eight when he asks his mom how she knows that she's a girl.

She pauses her hands, stops kneading the pizza dough she was making for dinner, twists her lips in the way she does when she's thinking and says, “I don't know, sweetie, it's just something you kinda know.”

Stiles frowns. “But what if you don't know?”

“Then you take what you do know and you use it to figure out what you don't.” She tells him, smiling. “And what you do know is that your dad and I love you no matter what, okay?”

Stiles scrunches up his face and grins, ducking his head down. “Mom.”

*****

Stiles is still eight when he makes a list of things that he does know.

He knows that he doesn't like being called a boy.

He knows that he doesn't really know what being a boy is supposed to feel like.

He knows that every time Scott uses words for him that aren't boy or brother, he feels like he's finally learning to breathe.

He gives the list to his mom, watches her read it and bite her lip, and starts to feel dizzy when she smiles at him and says, “Then we better figure this whole thing out, then.”

*****

Stiles is eight, still, and his mother has constructed herself a fort made out of every book about gender that she could find.

The sit together in the living room, reading them together, his mom asking questions and him shaking his head when something they read isn't something that he feels is about him, while his father sort of hovers around, looks lost, and starts to say something before stopping over and over again.

The books give them next to nothing, only make his mother frown and him feel itchy inside.

They're half-way through the second pile when his dad walks in with a thick pile of papers and a fond smile on his face as he hands them over and scratches his head. “It's the twenty-first century, hon. There are computers.”

His mother swats him with the papers before shaking her head, a small small on her face that grows as she scans them over and reads them out loud to him.

Stiles is eight and he has a word for what he is. He is agender and he feels like he's found home.

*****

Stiles is ten and his mother is _sick_ and he can't help but wonder if it's his fault.

His mother had worked hard to help him, maybe--

Maybe she'd worked _too_ hard. Maybe that had made her sick?

When he asks Melissa McCall this, she gets the same look she had that time that Scott asked when his dad was coming home while Stiles and his parents were there for dinner and they'd had to leave before dessert so the two could talk.

She kneels in front of him and squeezes his hand, firm just like her voice, “Stiles, you didn't make your mother sick, okay? Don't think that.”

He nods and she stares at him for a moment longer, before getting up and disappearing around a corner. She comes back a few minutes later with a book in hand and gives it to him, pats him on the shoulder one last time and smiles sadly. “If you want to...if you want to know what's going on with your mom, read through this and if you have any questions...”

Stiles cracks open the book and reads about cancer and tumors, radiation and chemo, hormones and tissue growth, and by the time he's done he's soaked the pages with his tears but at least he knows now—it's not his fault.

Knowing doesn't make it any better and when his mom dies, two months later, it's not much of a consolation.

*****

Stiles is eleven and his house is too quiet and too empty and he doesn't know what to do with that or with himself, either.

His dad is working more than he used to, _drinking_ more than he used to, and whenever Stiles opens his mouth to talk about his gender...issues and his feelings, he stops and feels selfish and guilty at the same time that he wonders why he's feeling those things.

Stiles is almost twelve when he looks at himself naked, in the long mirror that his mom used to love dressing up in front of but that's since been banished to the attic because his father couldn't stand to have it around him any more. he looks in the mirror and looks at himself, along his chest and between his legs, and he realizes that he can't breathe and that he feels wrong.

He hears the glass break, feels wet at the knuckles, and only manages to feel a sharp pang at the fact that he'd just destroyed something that his mother loved so much before he stumbles and chokes and everything goes black.

Stiles wakes up to his father shaking him, yelling and asking what happened. When Stiles just says, “I need mom here with me, I can't--”, his father apologizes and apologizes and cries and promises that he'll be there more.

His father keeps that promise. Stiles does, too, for awhile.

*****

Stiles is fifteen and Scott is a werewolf and people are dying all over the place and you'd think that that would put the whole gender thing on a back-burner, but it doesn't. Not for Stiles.

It's a constant whirring in his mind, painful and fascinating and him and why him and it's always there.

When he asks Danny if he's attractive to gay guys and wonders what answer would be better—if it's a yes and it's because they think he's a guy or if it's a no and it's because it's obvious that he's not a guy.

When he finds Derek Hale everywhere and wonders if Derek could relate to not having something that everyone else does, humanity or a family or whatever it is, Stiles doesn't know—wonders what it would be like to have actually cut off the man's arm, wonders what would happen if he'd asked someone to cut off parts of him that he'd thought about removing himself too many times to count.

When Peter Hale offers him the bite and he wonders if it would make the whir stop, if the whole thing is a side-effect of something else, if he's just kidding himself, and if super powers were a fair trade-off for possibly finding out that everything you finally figured out about yourself wasn't _right_.

When more people die and die and die and Scott isn't around as much and his dad doesn't trust him any more and Derek is the alpha and things finally go quiet and that whirring is still there and for some reason, Stiles was afraid that it wouldn't be.

Stiles is sixteen, Scott is a werewolf, a lot of people are dead, and he almost feels relieved because there are people out there that are different, too, and the possibility that he's going to be killed by the monster of the week before he manages to graduate aside, although still bright and glaringly there, he almost feels like he isn't as alone.

Almost.


End file.
